


Inescapable

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [164]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, Dark, F/M, Fluff, Innocence, M/M, POV Loki (Marvel), Possessive Behavior, Possessive Loki (Marvel), Pre-Relationship, Protective Loki (Marvel), Protectiveness, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28060926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Loki didn’t mean to get so wrapped up in a mortal, but here you were. And he’s not letting you go. (Dark!Loki but he keeps it hidden?)
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [164]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 12
Kudos: 206





	Inescapable

**Author's Note:**

> Loki’s dark and possessive in this one. In passing, he mentions wanting to essentially imprison you, but he doesn’t actually do it and, the way things are going with the two of you, he doesn’t need to. Sometimes it’s just really comforting for me to imagine something like this where it’s almost like, no matter what you do, you’re not going to turn someone away from you.

He never intended for any of this to happen. He was stuck here in this gutter of a realm, banished from his home and relegated to Midgard for all of eternity. Or at least until he could scheme his way out. The idea of getting attached to anything here had been laughable. There was nothing here that could so much as assuage his constant boredom, let alone become significant enough to him to inspire anything beyond dull loathing. Thor did what he could, practically turning himself into an overexcited mutt in hopes of enticing Loki to engage with the Midgardian “superheroes” who lived in the Tower, but...nothing. He had to live here for the foreseeable future; he didn’t have to enjoy it.

You were interesting. Over time, he discovered that he stopped mentally adding the “...for a Midgardian” qualifier to those sorts of thoughts. You were the newest on the team, and though you did tend a bit towards being a little overeager to engage with the others, or to hold your own against them in the field or in the gym, generally you appeared to have more depth to you. The others kept their distance from him, because they remembered his attack on their city or because they could see the disdain in his face, but you appeared to think of him as an ally. That was surprising.

So surprising, in fact, that he managed to ignore his immediate desire to make you regret it.

At first, he merely played along. The long dull hours of being alone were starting to grate on him, after all, and you were a decent way to pass the time. You were just as comfortable discussing literature as philosophy with him as you were with sparring and wrestling with him in the gym. You were strong for your size, and all too often, he found himself gaping up at you with surprise after you’d managed to knock him to the mat. And you were bloody brilliant. Not for a Midgardian. For anybody. Sometimes at night, he laid awake spinning situations in his mind where he brought you back to Asgard and sat you in Odin’s inner circle just so he could watch the bastard king’s eyes go wide as you took him to task.

And if, on occasion, his traitorous mind swept you into shadowed corners in the palace corridors, surely that was only his boredom and restlessness.

In the light of day, it was easier to maintain control of his imagination. You were undeniably human. You had many of the same quirks and foibles as the other so-called heroes. You could get just as caught up as the rest of them in their petty arguments and fights for dominance. The only difference was the fact that, when you saw him rolling his eyes at your behavior, you tended to fall quiet and look away from him. 

After a while, maybe he started to enjoy the way you stood up for him. He didn’t need anyone to look out for him, of course, least of all someone like you, but on the rare occasion that he was scheduled for missions in the field and the handlers asked for volunteers to go with him, the uncomfortable silences never lasted long before you jumped in. He did get a certain thrill out of watching you work and he found that you often let yourself fall asleep on the flight back home. You left yourself so open and vulnerable to him, and that started to grow on him.

He was stunted. Cold. Even if he had wanted to be able to show you the same level of affection that you so unabashedly shared with him, he had no idea how. But you appeared to be perfectly content to accept his wan smiles and the occasional awkward compliment. Sometimes your eyes shone so brightly at him that he began to suspect that this was all some kind of set-up. 

Things began to shift around the time that your relationship fell apart. You’d been dating some Midgardian boy, a civilian or else some low-tier agent who never had the courage to come up into the living space of the Tower. Even Loki knew that it wasn’t his place to speak on the boy, but he didn’t like him at all. It was hard not to listen in on your frequent telephone conversations with him, and just the sound of his voice was enough to set Loki’s teeth on edge. He was rude. He didn’t speak to you with any trace of the respect you deserved. It was good that he never joined you in any of the shared spaces in the Tower; Loki was certain that he wouldn’t be able to hold his tongue upon looking at the boy in person. He kept an eye on you. He knew from training in the gym that you didn’t bruise easily, but sometimes, after spending time with that boy, you would come home looking a little worse for the wear. When you thought you were alone, the shine went out of your eyes. Loki found that he hated whatever it was that that boy was doing to you, but he held his tongue. There was no reason for a Prince of Asgard to meddle in the affairs of Midgardians.

One night, you stole away to spend more time with that boy, and something prickled in the back of Loki’s mind. He didn’t like it, but, for you, and the way you sometimes whispered and giggled with Maximoff, he held his tongue. It was hard for him to settle. He paced his sleeping quarters and, when that grew tiresome, he took to the corridors. The others kept their distance, as they always did. Even Stark, who often had a quip on-hand, seemed to know well enough to keep to himself. It was hard to say exactly what was bothering him. He didn’t like that you were out with that boy. He didn’t like that strange feeling he had. But neither of those was, in itself, enough to justify this particular anger bubbling inside him. After a while, he decided that that uncertainty was what was unnerving him. That’s all. 

It certainly _wasn’t_ the way he kept imagining that boy’s hands on you.

When you came back, you tried to slip into your rooms unnoticed. _He_ should have been the one to hear you get off of the elevators, but Wanda got there first. He heard her voice, low and sympathetic, followed by a quiet sniffle that was distinctly _yours_. He turned on the ball of his foot and went directly to the elevator bay. The witch had her arm around you, but both of your hands covered your face. She started to lead you away, but Loki burst out of the shadows.

“What happened?” He told himself that it didn’t matter how his voice sounded; both of you were far too preoccupied to notice the edge of desperation in his words. “What is it?”

You shook your head a little too fiercely, and Wanda pulled you closer to her body. If there had been some strange ember of _something_ smoldering in his chest tonight, it flared to life at the sight of that. It was hard, but somehow he kept himself from reaching out to rip her away from you. Why did everyone else get to put their hands on you? Could everyone else feel for you the way he did? He doubted that very much.

To her credit, Wanda didn’t fight much harder to pull you away from him. When you regained enough control over yourself to lower your hands and swipe at the tears on your cheeks, Loki’s stomach tightened. You should _not_ be crying. Whatever had happened, it was enough to stir up long-forgotten desires—desires which had once been someone else’s entirely. He found that he wanted to tear this world apart, to crush it beneath his foot. It made you cry. That was unforgivable.

You groaned, a sound that came from somewhere deep inside you, and smoothed your hands along your hair. “He stood me up,” you said quietly. But you rolled your eyes. Despite your tears, despite the way your shoulders slumped, you were still trying so hard to make this look like it didn’t matter. Could the witch see through you like this? He stole a glance at her face. She was watching you, alright, but he couldn’t read anything in her face. “And then when I called him to ask where he was, he dumped me. It’s stupid. I’m fine.”

You were fine, but you were crying. You were fine, but you couldn’t hold yourself upright. Even now, you leaned into Wanda and let her support you. He had the distinctly uncomfortable realization, then, that _he_ wanted to be the one to hold you up.

A mortal.

She stole you away, muttering something about ice cream and bad movies, and Loki slipped out of the Tower. Surely it wouldn’t be hard to track that boy down. He couldn’t kill him—the treaty between the Midgardians and Odin had very carefully made sure of that—but there was nothing in the rules about scaring him a little.

From then on, you burrowed deeper and deeper beneath his skin. And he stopped fighting it quite so hard. He still didn’t think much of your teammates, but he found that he rarely thought of you with anything except...fondness. There was a time when it was hard to watch you interact with the others: you were so free with your affection and your body, hugging them and kissing their cheeks and grinning and winking, and every time you did, he clenched his fist and grit his teeth. It was okay for him to want your hands on him, because he was _more_ than they were, wasn’t he? Certainly he deserved you more.

As time wore on, and took you further and further from the memory of that boy, you appeared to become more and more comfortable with Loki. You started reaching for his hand, tucking yourself against him when you hugged him, sitting beside him when Thor managed to cajole him into coming down for a movie. The first time you fell asleep on him, your head heavy on his shoulder as your breaths grew deeper and deeper in the darkness, Loki sat there the whole time trying not to acknowledge how much he wanted to marvel at the feeling. You were soft and warm and so trusting. 

He wanted you to himself. Something dark inside him yearned to steal you away and lock you up and never let anyone else so much as look at you. That wasn’t an entirely new feeling for him, exactly, but it did feel strange. Because this wasn’t _merely_ possessiveness. Your world was cruel. Enemies sought to murder you and even the people who claimed to love you—like that boy—couldn’t seem to keep themselves from hurting you. If you were his and only his, he could keep you safe. He could shield you and protect you and ensure that you went on smiling.

He kept his longing to himself, but you must have seen some sign of protectiveness in him, because you kept allowing yourself to be more and more vulnerable around him. You started to lean into him and pull his arm around your shoulder even after the first time rendered him speechless and fumbling. By the time he finally slanted his lips over yours, it almost felt like a foregone conclusion. 

It felt right. When you tightened your arms around his neck and opened up to him, he took the lead immediately, slipping his tongue past your lips to taste you. You moaned—a breathy, desperate sound-- and pressed even closer. It was hard not to rush through this, hard to keep from absolutely devouring you so he could take his fill before you realized what was happening. But he held back. If that boy kissed you like that, he’d have his head. You deserved better than that. So instead, he savored every last bit of you even as he walked you backwards so he could press you against the wall. When at last you pulled away for breath, your eyes were wide and wondering, and then you were the one to surge forward again to capture his lips this time.

And now here he was. And here you were. You were nude beside him, and sleeping once again. He did not fight his smile. He knew you deserved to rest, after the sweet torment he’d put you through. When it came to your body, he had an appetite that could never be sated, no matter how breathless you became or how sweetly you pleaded with him to ease off. Something inside him was stirring again already, but your face looked so soft and peaceful that he did his best to ignore it. Instead, he fitted himself against your back and rested his arm in the curve of your waist. Even fast asleep, your body responded to him immediately, opening like the fresh bloom of a flower. With the loveliest sigh he’d ever heard, you leaned backwards into him and brought your hand down as though in search of his own. He smiled to himself as he laced his fingers through yours. 

You were his to touch, to kiss, to keep—but also to protect and support. It was hard to say whether you consciously realized that, but the way you never hesitated to melt into his touch and the way you smiled at him now even more brightly than before, that gave him hope. You belonged to him now.

But he was beginning to realize that he also belonged to you.


End file.
